The costs involved in developing the Lavi fighter jet soared astronomically. The launching of a prototype was seen as a means of securing independence from the Americans by developing a homegrown arms industry.
The cabinet was divided along Left–Right lines. A vote at the end of August resulted in a 12–11 vote to cancel the Lavi with one abstention. The fight to retain the Lavi was led by Moshe Arens, but Prime Minister Shamir had miscalculated the level of support. Labour was joined by the Likud finance minister who was unable to justify the cost.
The tree here is titled ‘Lavi’, and ‘Israel’ is seen as being pulled in opposite directions.
- 4 Jan
Interior minister Yitzhak Peretz submits resignation to cabinet over Reform convert
- 4 Jan
Vanunu goes on hunger strike over conditions in Ramla prison
- 26 Jan
Head of Fatah Youth, Mohammad Yusuf Dahlan, deported from Gaza
- 1 Feb
Cabinet approves Dan Shomron as next IDF Chief of Staff
- 6 Feb
Navy intercepts ship from Cyprus carrying 50 members of Fatah
- 21 Feb
Meir Ya’ari, founder of Mapam, leader of Kibbutz Artzi, dies aged 89
- 22 Feb
Jerusalem bomb injures 17 people outside Damascus Gate
- 4 Mar
Jonathan Pollard sentenced to life imprisonment for espionage in USA
- 18 Mar
Inner cabinet decides to stop military and technology sales to South Africa
- 11 Apr
Shimon Peres and King Hussein sign London Agreement
- 5 May
Israel interests section opened in Warsaw
- 11 May
Inner cabinet rejects Peres’s plan for an international conference
- 14 May
Fatah activists Khalil Ashour and Marwan Barghouti deported to Jordan
- 24 May
Supreme Court overturns espionage conviction of Izat Nafsu and orders release
- 26 May
Shinui’s Amnon Rubinstein resigns as minister of communications
- 1 June
Bomb in helicopter kills Lebanese premier Rashid Karami
- 7 June
Armed Jewish settlers attack Daheisha refugee camp near Bethlehem
- 9 June
Togo renews diplomatic relations, broken off in 1973
- 11 June
USA cancels sale of 1,600 Maverick air-to-ground missiles to Saudi Arabia
- 7 July
Oliver North tells US court that Israel knew about Iran–Contra affair
- 8 July
MKs prevent Chief Rabbinate having the sole right to approve conversions abroad
- 19 July
Rabin turns back Sharon’s bulldozers preparing for West Bank settlement
- 30 Aug
Vanunu trial opens in camera in Jerusalem District Court
- 30 Aug
Lavi project discontinued by cabinet vote 12–11, with one abstention
- 1 Sept
Workers block Jerusalem–Tel Aviv highway over Lavi cancellation
- 2 Sept
Moshe Arens resigns from cabinet over Lavi cancellation
- 11 Sept
Amiram Nir, implicated in Iran–Contra affair, sacked as Shamir adviser
- 14 Sept
Israel and Hungary to set up interest sections in respective countries
- 15 Sept
US administration closes Washington PLO information office
- 16 Sept
Inner cabinet decides to impose far-reaching sanctions on South Africa
- 25 Sept
Abba Kovner, poet and Vilna partisan, dies at Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh aged 79
- 30 Sept
Peres meets foreign minister of China, Wu Xueqian, at UN
- 15 Oct
Refusenik Ida Nudel arrives in Israel after 17 years’ refusal
- 26 Oct
Vladimir and Masha Slepak, long-time refuseniks, arrive in Israel
- 25 Nov
Hang-gliding Palestinian from Lebanon kills six soldiers near Kiriat Shemona
- 2 Dec
William Nakash extradited to France following in-absentia murder conviction
- 9 Dec
First Intifada begins after motor accident in Jabalia refugee camp
As prime minister, Peres had fashioned the possibility of such a conference in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 1986 and had secured Mubarak’s agreement to establish a joint preparatory group with the Egyptians. He argued that there should be no imposed solution. The format would be an opening ceremony, followed by bilateral committees which would hammer out the specifics of such regional disputes. Peres had stipulated that any Palestinian participation should only take place as part of the Jordanian delegation and that such participants should not be members of the PLO. The conference was based on acceptance of UN resolutions 242 and 338 which the PLO rejected.
With a political thaw taking place with Gorbachev’s leadership of the USSR, Peres insisted that Moscow’s participation would be predicated on its lifting of restrictions preventing Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. He also demanded that diplomatic relations between the USSR and Israel should be restored. While leading refuseniks such as Natan Sharansky, the Slepaks and Ida Nudel were allowed to leave for Israel, the Kremlin only offered the proposition of establishing ‘interest offices’ in Tel Aviv and Moscow.
Yitzhak Shamir strongly opposed the idea of an international conference. He believed that France, China and the USSR would enforce a return to the 1967 borders and a reversal of the settlement drive on the West Bank and Gaza.
Unofficial meetings between Israeli and Chinese diplomats in Europe were often positive, with the promise of recognition in the event of an international conference. Shamir argued that Peres’s plan would leave Israel isolated and instead called for direct negotiations with the Jordanians on the model of the Camp David Agreement of 1979. King Hussein, however, refused to negotiate with Israel outside the framework of an international conference. This stand-off became more pronounced once Shamir had become prime minister in October 1986 while Peres became foreign minister.
While the Likud was deliberately kept out of the picture and Shamir not even shown the text of the London Agreement, both sides tried to cultivate outside actors, in particular the USA. Peres had tried to persuade the United States that it should present the London Agreement as purely an American initiative.
By May, both the London Agreement and Shamir’s own plan were presented to the inner cabinet, which split along party lines. Although no vote was taken, the division was 5–5. While many in Labour called for the dissolution of the government and a general election, Peres discovered that the party did not have sufficient votes to ensure the dissolution of the Knesset. The other choice of going into opposition meant handing over power to figures such as Sharon.
The stalemate persuaded the initially enthusiastic Americans not to interfere. Despite an address to the UN General Assembly and Peres’s appeal to the Palestinians that ‘the time for recrimination and blame is past’, the London Agreement was stillborn.
The Palestine National Council, meeting in Algiers, moved towards a harder line. The PFLP was welcomed back into the PLO while both Egypt and Jordan distanced themselves from Arafat. Even so, Israel’s approach towards cultivating pro-Jordanian Palestinians made hardly any advances. In June, there was an assassination attempt on Abdullah Lahluh, the mayor of Jenin.
Many Israeli leftists were willing to meet members of the PLO. Four Israelis met PLO representatives in Romania and were promptly put on trial on their return to Israel. At their trial, an intelligence official testified that they had met with the PLO with government approval in the hope of finding a pathway to secure the release of Israelis held by Arab states.
Ezer Weizman was the sole Israeli politician who was willing to propose talks with the PLO. The Likud attacked anyone who argued for a dialogue with the Palestinians. Abba Eban, the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee, was attacked for giving an interview on Amman television. In contrast, Ariel Sharon moved into his apartment in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem in December and held a housewarming party there.
At the end of 1986, details of the Iran–Contra affair appeared in the Lebanese press. Senior officials in the Reagan administration were prepared to circumvent the arms embargo of Iran in order to secure the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by Shi’ite militants. Several Lebanese Jews had been kidnapped and murdered as ‘spies for the Mossad’ by ‘the Organisation of the Oppressed of the Earth’ – a Shi’ite group with connections to Hezbollah. In addition, thousands of Iranian Jews were allowed to leave their country. The operation would be facilitated by using Israel as an intermediary and building on the transfer of PLO arms, captured in the Lebanon war in 1982, to Iran. The plan was modified to divert funds from the sale of the arms to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
In April, three Israeli citizens were indicted for their role in selling American arms to Iran. Amiram Nir, a counter-terrorism adviser to both Peres and Shamir, resigned from his post. Following the revelations of the Pollard case, American Jews and their organisations were critical of the Shamir government, viewing the USA–Israel relationship as undermined. Moreover, in testifying to the House–Senate select committee on the affair, Lt. Col. Oliver North further described ‘the ineptness’ of the Israelis in supplying the wrong type of Hawk missiles to the Iranians.
The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in the USA forced Israel to terminate its role as a supplier of arms and weapons systems to South Africa. These included Saar-class boats, Gabriel surface-to-surface missiles and components of the Kfir jet fighter-bomber. Israel feared the loss of jobs and quantities of coal imported from South Africa. The South African Jewish Board of Deputies and the Zionist Federation opposed the imposition of sanctions, while the Afrikaaner press was critical of Israel’s actions. In contrast, many Black African states began to strengthen their ties with Israel which had been broken off after the Yom Kippur War in 1973. In September the inner cabinet approved moves to freeze government loans, the import of iron and steel and the purchase of Krugerrands.
After he was abducted from Rome in a honey-trap operation in October 1986, the trial of Mordechai Vanunu began at the end of August in the Jerusalem District Court. Despite a determined attempt by Vanunu, his family and supporters to have an open trial, it took place behind closed doors. Vanunu was charged with treason, espionage and the acquiring of classified information regarding Israel’s nuclear programme during his time as a technician at Dimona. Vanunu’s revelations had been published by the Sunday Times in the UK in October 1986 and his incarceration was confirmed by Israel a few weeks later. He revealed that Israel had the ability to produce the isotope tritium and could process plutonium. The Sunday Times suggested that Israel had stockpiled up to a hundred nuclear devices and was the world’s sixth largest nuclear power. While Vanunu was regarded as a disarmament hero within the international peace movement, he was looked upon as a traitor in Israel.
